As we begin the
final quarter of the year together, understand that the things that
interfered with your efforts before are not going to go away. Life is going
to continue to interfere with your weight loss efforts: birthday parties
with cake and ice cream, working late so that you can't exercise when you
want to, even an injury that prevents you from exercising at all for a time.
Those things are going to happen. What can you do? Anticipate, adapt, and
improvise. Today, we'll focus on the first, anticipate, and cover the others
in future Bulletins.

Right now, you probably know the dates of every birthday of everyone in your
life. You also know the dates of the holidays. You also know how you
typically celebrate those events. It shouldn't be any surprise that there
will be cake and ice cream at your child's or your co-worker's birthday
party. That means you can prepare in advance how you'll handle that event.
Cut back earlier in the day, then join the celebration and have a small
serving of each. Or just sing "Happy Birthday" and enjoy a cup of coffee.
You can anticipate what's going to happen and have a plan to deal with it.

Anticipate and plan: one of the keys to making this quarter different from
the rest of the year. Learn to anticipate because your better body depends
on it.